


Of Brine and Black Feathers

by sixappleseeds



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-07 17:14:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4271406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixappleseeds/pseuds/sixappleseeds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scorpio Races/Raven Cycle AU.  Adam Parrish is working as a mechanic on Thisby when Ronan Lynch arrives to take a job at Malvern Yard. Set about two years after the events of The Scorpio Races.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Adam Parrish was halfway under Thomas Gratton’s truck when he learned about the new hire at Malvern Yard. Ordinarily such news did not concern him: although Benjamin Malvern might call him when a piece of machinery needed repairing, Adam was not in the man’s employ. As one of the few mechanics on the island, and the only one specializing in modern engines, Adam Parrish worked for himself.  
  
So it was not hearing of Malvern’s new underling that caught Adam’s attention, but the fact that this underling came from the mainland.  
  
“Never set foot on the island before, as far as I heard,” Gratton was saying. He was crouched by the passenger door, Adam’s good side. Adam could see his hands resting on his knees, and the toes of his scuffed boots. “No family here, either. In fact, Beaton says that this fellow simply read about us in the papers, wrote to Malvern, and got himself a job. Can you believe it?”  
  
Adam frowned up at a rusting oil pan. No one decided to move to Thisby.  Ships came to the island loaded with tourists, with imports, and occasionally with the rare islander who came back after moving away.  Adam himself had spent a couple of years off-island, learning his trade from his mother’s brother, but he’d left knowing he would return. He could not think of anyone, or even of anyone who knew anyone, who moved to Thisby after a life on the mainland.  
  
“And how does Mr Beaton know all this?” he asked at last, pitching his voice so Gratton could hear him.  
  
“Ahh,” the other man replied. “It would seem that this mainlander has already opened an account at the Island Bank. And it would seem, if Beaton’s tallies are true, that this mainlander only took the job with Malvern for the fun of it.”  
  
There was a pause. Adam stared up at the truck’s underbelly and imagined Gratton waggling his eyebrows.  
  
“What I mean, man,” Gratton continued, “is that this fellow is richer than Solomon.”  
  
“Though not half so wise,” Adam remarked. “If he’s decided to move to Thisby.”  
  
Gratton laughed, as Adam knew he would.  “I’ll leave the money behind the counter,” he said, rising. He thumped the top of the truck. “Thanks again.”  
  
“Just glad I had the part,” Adam murmured as Gratton walked away.    
  
With the efficiency he was becoming known for, Adam finished repairing Gratton’s starter, most of his attention on the task above him. But a part of his brain was already adding this job’s earnings to his own balance at the Island Bank. He knew that even with this extra boost his savings could be nowhere close to the wealth of the newcomer, and he let the sting of it slide off as best he could.  He would never be rich. Not repairing engines on Thisby, he wouldn’t.  But it was enough. He had enough.  
  
When he slid out from under the truck some time later, the sky overhead was clear, or as clear as the sky ever got over Thisby.  Clouds on the horizon though, Adam noticed as he stood, and wind out of the east. Winter was over, the ferries were running again, but they’d likely have a storm tomorrow just the same.  
  
He thought of that new mainlander again, and though for the life of him he couldn’t have said why, Adam hoped he was faring well enough in his new home.  
  
.  
  
Ronan Lynch stared around his room, a dingy garret of a space tucked above the main stable in Malvern Yard. There was one window, a narrow bunk, a wooden chair, a cold iron radiator, and a small stove. To this space, he added himself, two trunks, and a wireframe birdcage.  
  
“ _Kerah_?” the room’s other occupant said softly.  
  
Ronan sighed, and dropped onto the bed. It shuddered alarmingly. He allowed himself thirty seconds to wonder what the hell he was doing here, and then he rubbed his hands over his face and sat up.  He looked at his bird. She peered through the cage wires back at him.  
  
“It’s going to rain,” he told her. He did not question how he knew this. “I’d better see about getting us some food before it does.”  He threw a blanket over the cage, ignoring his bird’s disgusted croak. She never understood when she saw him leaving without her.  
  
At the bottom of the narrow staircase, he paused.  
  
Benjamin Malvern himself had given Ronan a tour of the Yard earlier that day, and Ronan spent the time sizing up the men around him, from the grooms to the riders to the trainers.  Now, he looked at the stables.  
  
Electric bulbs hung on long cables from the arched ceiling, casting shadows. Ronan could see stone faces peering around columns, painted knots twisting across the vaulting, silhouettes of unfamiliar horses moving within iron-barred stalls. This was such a creeping strange place. It felt more like an ancient church than a stable, like he should be offering not his skills as an equestrian, but penitence and sacrifice to some heathen deity.  He was not at all sure he felt comfortable sleeping here, in his tiny flat above the tack room, in the midst of all of this.  
  
Ronan closed his eyes and took a long, long breath. To look at this place might’ve made him feel heretical, but the smells of a stable were universal. The honey-sweet scent of hay, the sharpness of leather, and the dusty warm smell of horses, these evoked memories of rainy afternoons spent in the barns of his childhood home. He breathed again, grounding himself, and exhaled on a sigh.  
  
Now, to find his way out. He had parked his bike under a lean-to outside the yard. Ronan took a few steps toward the probable exit -- this place with its stones and shadows disoriented him yet -- and paused again when he heard a barn door open behind him.  
  
Out of the brightness of the yard came a massive horse, still steaming from its ride, mincing on unshod feet down the aisle. Beside the creature, dwarfed by its bulk, strode the slight, sharp figure of a man. Silhouetted as they were, moving precisely and almost soundlessly over the flagstones, Ronan saw for an instant not man and horse, but fae and beast, tethered together by ribbons, threads, whispers.  
  
He forgot to breath. Catching himself pressed back against the nearest stall door as the figures approached, he felt a flash of hot anger at his own cowardice, and exhaled softly.  
  
The barn lights picked up the pair, and revealing a grey animal gone black with sweat, a curling lip, an impossibly deep chest, and a canny, weeping eye. Ronan inhaled, took in the startling scent of brine and old blood. This was not a horse. The iron clasps of the stall door bit into Ronan’s back.  
  
Of the man he could only see a pair of striding, mud-splattered boots, the corners of a dark battered jacket, and the way the man’s hands gripped the horse’s -- _capall uisce_ ’s -- lead.  
  
“I can’t stop now,” the man said as they passed. The animal danced a few precarious steps, and the man yanked its lead once. “But you, whoever you are, should know better than to stand around when there’s a _capall_ coming through.”  
  
Ronan bared his teeth at the both of them as they continued on their way. He wondered if this was Sean Kendrick, Malvern’s stubbornly independent head trainer. Kendrick had been out earlier, on business, Malvern had said, but everything Ronan had read and heard about the man seemed confirmed in this encounter.  
  
He was right, of course: Ronan shouldn’t have stood in the aisle gaping like so much bait, but he would let the _capall_ eat him before admit that aloud.  He shoved his cap on his head and took the other way out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shorter Ronan POV part, because the next part is quite long. Takes place a few hours after the end of the previous chapter.

Ronan contemplated ripping his tiny stove from the wall and hurling it out the window. How hard could it be to start a fire? People started fires all the time. People had been starting fires successfully for millennia, in fact.  Yet here he was, a stove full of cold coal and two matches left in the box, shivering.  Outside the wind howled. The rain would be starting any time.  The lamp -- fortunately electric, because at this point he didn’t trust his ability to light a bloody candle -- flickered.   
  
“Don’t you dare go out,” Ronan growled at it.  His raven hunched back in her cage, croaking.  “Not you,” he told her.  “I’ll feed you soon.”  He glared at the stove.  It glared back balefully.   
  
The last time Ronan had lived someplace with actual fireplaces, there had been staff to keep the damn things going. He couldn’t remember if he had ever seen anyone start a fire: the hearths had simply always been lit, crackling away in every room his family used.   
  
He felt more than heard the tread of someone coming up the stairs. Grabbing the birdcage blanket, he rubbed as much of the coal soot as he could off his hands, and kicked the nearly-empty matchbox under the bed.  When a quiet knock sounded at his door, Ronan was standing by his window, pretending he wasn’t cold.   
  
It was the man from earlier, still all angles and shadows in the dim light. He held up a bucket full of sticks. When Ronan didn’t immediately step back, the man said, “I couldn’t remember if I left any kindling up here.  That stove’s a bitch to light.”   
  
Ronan opened the door.   
  
The man -- Sean Kendrick? -- slipped around Ronan, and paused for a moment when he saw the birdcage. Then he knelt by the stove and produced another match box and a sheaf of newspapers from his jacket. He did not speak, but his movements were deliberate. Ronan crouched down to watch.   
  
Into the stove went several wads of crumpled newspaper, a little tent of twigs, and then a couple of larger sticks. Finally the match -- only one, Ronan noted, and set himself a goal for tomorrow.  
  
“I’m Kendrick, by the way,” the man said, feeding several more sticks into the flames.  Ronan didn’t see the point of saying that he had already guessed this. He wondered if Kendrick recognized Ronan as the stranger he’d scolded earlier.   
  
Kendrick carefully set a lump of coal in the fire. “You already have a lot of coal in there. Wait until most of it catches, and then close the vent --”  he pointed to a nob on the stove “-- halfway to keep it burning for a while.  It will warm up in here eventually,” he added, glancing over his shoulder at Ronan.  The orange light from the fire caught on his cheekbones and the small smile around his eyes. Ronan blinked.   
  
“Thanks,” Ronan said.  He stood, stepped back.   
  
“It’s not a problem.” Kendrick rose as well.  He glanced again at the birdcage. The raven was poking her beak through the bars. “That’s not going to scare the horses, is it?”  
  
“She grew up around horses,” Ronan replied. He’d answered this question, or something like it, at every stable he’d visited in the last three years.  “And she listens to me.”  
  
He watched Kendrick’s eyes take in the raven, the cage, the contents of Ronan’s tiny room. Ronan noticed he was taller than the other man by half a head. Kendrick’s gaze flicked back to Ronan’s face. “What do you call her?”  
  
“Chainsaw.”  
  
Kendrick’s mouth twitched. “Well, I’ve heard worse.”  He looked down at the stove, which was now burning merrily. “If you don’t mind me asking...”  He brushed back his hair with one hand.  “Why are you here?”  
  
“For the job.” It was a thin slice of the truth.  
  
Kendrick stared without blinking. Ronan returned it, brow quirked.    
  
“I do know your name, Ronan Lynch,” the other man said at last. “Even here, we’ve heard of you.  And you’ll forgive me if I cannot believe that someone like you would move to Thisby to take a job as an exercise rider.”   
  
There are, Ronan knew, advantages to being famous for one particular thing. No one ever expects you to be more than the thing you are known for. No one ever looks beyond that veneer.   
  
“Maybe I was tired of winning championships,” Ronan said, shrugging carelessly. “There are only so many pea-brained thoroughbreds you can ride before the fun wears off.”   
  
“So you came to ride our _capaill_ ,” Kendrick said.  
  
“So I saw Benjamin Malvern’s advertisement in the paper and decided riding sea monsters would be an interesting change of pace.”   
  
Kendrick snorted softly. He sounded like a horse himself. Finally he turned away. “There’s more coal in the bins behind the farriers’ shed,” he said. “Remember to dock what you take from your pay. Not,” he added as he paused in the doorway, “that you will be worrying about the money.” 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It may be storming outside, but Adam is cozily ensconced in his apartment for the day.

The late-season storm was well underway by Saturday afternoon, howling and tearing its way across Thisby. Adam spent the morning at his kitchen table, steeped in receipts and balance sheets, the chore made bearable by the fact that he finally, for the fourth month in a row, had enough money. After eighteen months back on the island, taking every kind of repair job he could find, he had paid off his debts, from the back rent on his apartment above Palsson’s bakery to the loans he had at Thisby Bank for his tools.  Adam Parrish was working in the black, and at four months running he no longer let himself fret that it was an error in his maths.   
  
With rain lashing the windows and flooding Skarmouth’s side streets, Adam put away his budget books and relocated to the armchair in his living room, to knit.  It was always possible in a storm like this that someone’s pump would go out, or a truck engine would flood, and he’d get a call from downstairs to go fix whatever needed fixing.  It was possible, but unlikely. In the meantime, he had promised Finn Connolly a new sweater.   
  
His father had not liked it when Adam’s mother had taught him to knit, but then his father had not liked much of anything about Adam. Robert Parrish was a fisherman, and it took years for Adam to realize that not all fishermen on this island were the hard, embittered men his father had been.  When Adam left the island to apprentice with his uncle, he made a point of learning how to repair boat motors; since his return, some of his best business came from fishermen.  If the occasional scent of the docks still sent his heart pounding, he had over a year’s worth of memories to overlay the older ones of his father.  
  
Adam set down his needles, disgusted with himself. How long would it take before even the simple task of knitting did not make him remember what should stay buried with Robert Parrish?  He started counting his stitches aloud, willing his mind to the present, to the wool on his lap and the sound of the rain, to the sound of his own voice. Five rows later, he paused again. “I fix things,” he whispered firmly. “I use my hands to mend, not break. I am not my father.”  Then he stared out the window for a long time.  
  
A pounding on his door startled him so badly he dropped his needles. _It’s not your father_ , he told himself, the thought both a habit and a necessity. Someone had a broken pump this afternoon after all.  He stuffed the half-finished sweater back in his knitting basket and rose.  
  
“Adam, are you home?”  
  
“Oh!” he said, and opened the door.  “Hullo, Puck.”   
  
Puck Connolly strode in, dripping like a fish. Her hair was maroon with water and plastered to her face, which was scowling. She smelled like the rain. Adam fetched her a towel.  
  
“Can you believe the weather?” Puck pushed back her hair. “I was at Dory Maud’s but finished early, and I saw your light on.”  She dropped her jacket over the radiator, accepted the offered towel. “Palsson’s closes at five, but Sean’s at the Yard until after eight, so I told Finn to come up when he’s done, if you’ll be around?”  
  
Adam watched Puck drip onto his living room floor, and thought about the dinner he was simmering on the stove. Gratton had given him some beef cubes yesterday, and Adam had spent all day content with the knowledge that he’d have beef stew this week.    
  
“Sure, alright,” he said. “Why don’t you stay for dinner, then?”   
  
Puck beamed.   
  
.  
  
Adam was adding more coal to the big iron stove in the kitchen when Finn clambered up the stairs from his shift at Palsson’s. Puck opened the door with a greeting that, in other families, would be mistaken for a scold; Adam straightened and smiled to himself.  
  
“Hallo, Adam!” Finn cried. “Thanks for dinner!”  He dumped two paper bags on the table and appeared at Adam’s side, smelling of yeast and sugar.  “Looks good,” he said, peering into the stew pot.  
  
Adam transferred the spoon he was holding to his other hand. “Should be. It has some of Gratton’s best beef in it. And carrots, and onions and potatoes.”  
  
“Stew onions are the only kind I like,” Finn said. He snaked an arm around Adam’s waist, squeezed, and then sidled away to begin washing his hands.  
  
“I know,” Adam murmured.  He wasn’t sure when Finn had adopted him into the Connolly family, he only knew that Finn had, sometime between Adam’s departure and his return three years later. Adam had been worried at first, but after several conversations with Puck, they had both concluded that he hadn’t replaced Gabe Connolly, two years gone to the mainland, so much as Finn had simply decided that Adam Parrish, family-less, could be a Connolly too.  
  
The paper bags contained a loaf of bread and a pile of cinnamon twists, to go with dinner, Finn explained over the sound of his hand washing. Adam knew the bread would have been Puck’s idea. The thought that she was so assured of Adam’s hospitality settled cozily in his belly.  
  
Puck began pulling bowls from the corner cupboard and haranguing Finn over the cinnamon twists. Finn hollered back that hardly anyone had come in the shop today, on account of the rain, and Palsson would’ve just given them to the dogs anyway.  Finn was still at the sink. Puck was across the room, hands on her hips by Adam’s kitchen table. Her hair was drying and frizzing out all over the place.   
  
“Well I don’t suppose you rescued any more bread, did you?” Puck demanded, warming to her theme. “Just sweets, and we’ll eat them all tonight, so we won’t need to eat breakfast tomorrow, or lunch, or dinner, or did you forget that tomorrow’s a Sunday and everything’s closed?”  
  
Finn was rinsing his hands, and didn’t say anything. Adam, who could sense a fight at fifty paces, wisely kept the grin from his face.   
  
“Stew’s ready,” he said after a moment. “Puck, give me your bowl.”   
  
Later, after the washing up was done and Adam had convinced Puck to take what remained of dinner back with her, the three of them settled in the living room. Finn inspected the progress of his sweater and rooted through Adam’s knitting basket to find his own project, a scarf he’d been working on for months.  He perched on a low stool by the radiator, while Puck cradled a mug of tea in her hands and stared out the window.  
  
“The Morris’s engine is not going to flood,” she said, apparently to the rain-washed street below.  
  
“Nope,” Finn said.    
  
Adam brought in a stool from the kitchen and picked up his own knitting. “The tricky part will be the low point at the bottom of Malvern’s drive,” he guessed. “Are you meeting Sean there?”  
  
“He said this morning he would try to get a ride into town.” She was still glaring out the window.  
  
“Well, that’s what he’ll do then. How long will this storm last, Finn?”  
  
Finn looped yarn around his finger and purled once.  “Not much longer, I don’t think.”  He looped the yarn the other way to knit again.  “I parked the Morris behind Palsson’s, Kate. The only mud’ll be in the alley, and then our own drive, which of course is a pigsty by now.”   
  
“Of course,” Puck sneered. “Excuse me for worrying.”   
  
“You can’t help it,” Finn said blithely.  
  
For a tense moment Adam could imagine Puck’s mug shattering against the wall behind Finn’s head. He rose, took the tea from her, and set it on the floor by the armchair.  
  
“I heard from Gratton that Malvern has a new underling,” he said, fetching the bag of cinnamon twists from the kitchen.  
  
Puck snorted, and flopped into the armchair. “Sean’s met him. Says he’s seen _capaill_ friendlier than this man. I can’t imagine why he’s here.”  
  
“What’s his name?”  He offered Puck a cinnamon twist. She scowled up at him, but took it anyway.  
  
“Ronan Lynch,” Finn said, rolling his _r_ and stretching the vowels so that Adam had to repeat it in his head once or twice before he understood.  
  
“Lynch? He’s Irish, then?” Legend had it that Thisby had been founded by ancient Irish mariners, but when anyone spoke of going to the mainland now, they meant Britain. Adam hadn’t even met an Irishman until he apprenticed with his uncle in Glasgow three years ago.  
  
Puck nodded. “Dory Maud says his father was a Republican, fought in the war, and got tangled up after.”   
  
“Messy,” Finn said in a final sort of way. Adam frowned.  
  
“Dory Maud also says,” Puck continued, “that this Lynch spends his money on horses and motorcycles, not arms and lost causes.”  
  
“And how does Dory Maud know all this?” Island gossip was inevitable, but Lynch had only arrived on Thisby three days ago.  
  
“He’s been all over the papers, at least on the mainland,” Puck said. “The sports and society pages.”  
  
“She has a picture of him jumping a horse over a car,” Finn said. “In a frame and everything.”   
  
“Well.” Adam sat back in his chair. He remembered his exchange with Gratton yesterday, about this man being richer than Solomon and half as wise. “I suppose I can see why Malvern hired him, then.”   
  
At a quarter past eight, and twenty minutes after Finn observed that the rain had stopped, the sound of an engine roared into Skarmouth.  It was so loud, and so incongruous with the town’s typical noises, that both Finn and Adam dropped their knitting to rush to the window.   
  
“Would you look at that bike,” Finn breathed.  
  
“Guess Sean found a ride after all.” Adam watched the slight figure of Sean Kendrick detach himself from the back of a motorcycle. Idling outside Palsson’s bakery, the bike seemed unreal, something born in a factory far away, all black paint and white pinstripes and shiny chrome. The big round headlight shone like a beacon on the wet paving stones. The street lamps picked up Sean’s hair, tousled from the ride, and gleamed off the driver’s helmet and goggles.   
  
Puck wedged herself under Adam’s arm to peer down onto the street.  “Oh,” she said softly. “Hmm.”   
  
Suddenly, startling as the bike itself, something dark darted out of the night towards the motorcycle. Adam, shocked, watched Sean Kendrick duck while a shadow flapped around both men. The bike’s driver started laughing, or seemed to, head thrown back and hand on his belly. Adam could see he had very white teeth.  Sean jerked a shoulder, raised his chin, and disappeared into the building below. Puck immediately moved away to get the door.   
  
“Christ,” Adam murmured, still staring out the window. “Is that a bird?” The shadow was dancing around the biker’s head, looking like a bat, or a bird, or a very small demon. The engine growled, gloriously loud and out of place on Skarmouth’s rain-washed streets.   
  
“ _Corvus corax_ ,” Finn said, face intent.  
  
Adam was in no way surprised that Finn would know the Latin names for unexpected birds, but did wonder how Finn could identify one after dark. “Crow?”   
  
“A raven, I think,” Finn replied. He stared into the orange-lit street. “Probably. Yes. Definitely a raven.” Then he shrugged, and turned to greet Sean, just coming in the room.  
  
Adam remained at the window. He watched the man below walk his bike around, noted the calf-high black boots he wore, the way his gloved hand revved the engine. Adam saw him roll his shoulders, glance behind him, and then let the bike go. He roared off into the night, with that big black bird soaring behind him.  
  
.  
  
 _Ronan Lynch_. The name turned over and over in Adam’s head, the rolled _r_ and those long vowels making it songlike and compelling.  Ronan Lynch, who had a raven and no father, who was meaner than a _capall uisce_ and whose antics made the society papers on the mainland. Who had taken a job as an exercise rider at Malvern Yard, and spent today, according to Sean Kendrick, mucking stalls and calming storm-scared horses.   
  
“I will not say I like him,” Sean had said.  “But he kept the brood mares from laming themselves. The foaling’s due to start next week. It could have been bad.”   
  
From his bed, burrowed under afghans he’d made, Adam listened to the small sounds of his apartment in the quiet of the night, and he thought about the grudging respect in Sean’s voice when Puck and Finn had quizzed him on Malvern’s new hire. Sean had not asked for the ride into town; it was only when Lynch suggested Sean could break both ankles in the mud for all he cared that Sean had accepted the offer.  
  
Apparently he called his raven Chainsaw.   
  
Adam rolled over.  Perhaps Thisby was unprepared for the likes of this newcomer, improbable as his presence might seem. Perhaps Thisby would need to start its own society papers. But if Adam knew one thing, it was that Lynch’s fancy motorcycle would not take kindly to damp, brine-encrusted island roads. It was only a matter of time before he would meet Ronan Lynch face to face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the ending of TSR implies that Puck takes a job with Malvern, but I decided that she also still paints teapots for Dory Maud, maybe one or two days per week.

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to TheSmudgyOne for support, encouragement, patience, and excellent beta-ing on this!


End file.
